There are ways the "new" NOAA of Lubchenco, Schwaab, and interim police chief Alan Risenhoover could make this forum valuable. That's to drop Cohen from the program, and announce to fishermen that he, Juliand and other enforcement thugs tied to this agency's shameful legacy are out the door — without honor.
Then, they could add a truly meaningful workshop: One that tells fishermen wrongly driven to bankruptcy or out of business how to sign up to recoup their money, especially from NOAA's Asset Forfeiture Fund.
According to the agenda for the big "NOAA Fisheries Service Enforcement Forum" — set for a week from tonight at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration building in Gloucester's Blackburn Industrial Park — the three-hour program will include a presentation by Gloucester-based Agent-in-Charge Andy Cohen on "the agents' role in the fishery enforcement process and communicating with fishing industry members."
That sounds interesting, but only if Cohen and his heavy-handed sidekick, Chuck Juliand, address the real issues at hand, like:
Justification for their agents' wrongfully entering a local business — the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction — without any authorization, as outlined in a 2006 Gloucester Police report.
Sending two armed agents to "visit" another Gloucester waterfront businessman, Intershell's Monte Rome, in late February 2010 to "ask" about his testimony on behalf the auction in a pending court trial.
Even better, maybe Cohen — especially in the wake of a scathing Inspector General's report about excessive Northeast fishery fines and penalties — can explain his thuggish bid to sock a New Jersey family with fine of $270,000 — $10,000 per page — for routine reporting violations, only to have his proposed "penalty" scoffed at and reduced to a fraction, even by a judge within the Coast Guard's usually-rigged administrative law system.
Best of all, Cohen and Juliand — who told the Times he certainly "plans to be there" — should try to explain how they still have jobs now that their supervisor and mentor, NOAA national enforcement chief Dale Jones, has apparently been sacked. The IG's report, among other things, found Jones misused an $8.4 million fund built on the fines and penalties paid by fishermen, created a culture that has treated fishermen like criminals. And Cohen and Juliand are indeed poster boys for that culture.
Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.